


Promises

by biswholocked



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Johnlock - Freeform, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 17:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1234174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biswholocked/pseuds/biswholocked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock goes missing and John goes looking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is post-Reichenbach, but somewhat AU in that John never met Mary and is still living at 221B.

“Sherlock?” John called. “I got some fish and chips-” he paused as he stood in the doorway of the flat. “Sherlock?” he asked again. “You here?” He walked into the kitchen and set the bag of food on the table, then turned around and walked back into the living room.  
“Where could he be?” John knew it was unlikely that Sherlock had taken a case without him, though perhaps, if it was interesting enough...but just in case, he texted him.  
Did you get a case?  
John sat down in his chair with a sigh and rubbed a hand over his eyes. He’d had a nightmare last night, and as a result his mind was quite foggy. He rested his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes, only intending to rest for a moment but he felt his grip on the waking world slowly slip away until all that was left was sleep.  
….  
He sat up with a start, taking a moment to figure out where he was. The flat was dark, save for a small light in the kitchen, and once his eyes adjusted he realized that the bag of fish and chips was still on the table where he’d left it, hours earlier. A ball of worry began to work its way into the pit of his stomach, and John fished his mobile out of his pocket. He stared down at the screen and the worry got bigger; there were no texts from Sherlock. He always texted back. He dialed Sherlock’s number, but it kept ringing and then went to voicemail.  
John walked over to the staircase “Mrs Hudson?” he yelled.  
Their landlady came to the foot of the stairs and looked up at John with a questioning look on her face. “Yes John? What is it? D’you and Sherlock want me to make you two a cuppa?”  
The fact that Mrs Hudson didn’t know about Sherlock’s absence worried John even more. “No, actually I was wondering...have you seen Sherlock today?”  
She looked up to the ceiling for a moment and then back at John. “I saw him briefly this morning but he left a couple hours before you came back. Why?”  
“Shit,” John swore under his breath, and before Mrs Hudson had totally finished her sentence he was down the stairs and at the door, pulling out his mobile and looking for Mycroft’s number.  
“John, what’s going on?”  
He looked back at her. “I don’t know Mrs Hudson. And that’s what makes it wrong.” He shut the door behind him and hurried down the front steps waving down a taxi as Mycroft’s number was ringing. “St Bart’s, please,” he said to the cab driver. and cursed mentally as the call went to voicemail.  
“Mycroft, it’s John. Why the bloody hell don’t you ever answer your phone?” he closed his eyes for a moment and tried to gather patience with the man. “Sherlock’s gone missing and he isn’t answering his mobile. I’m going over to St Bartholomew’s to see if Molly’s heard from him. Call me back Mycroft-for once in your life, call back,” he ended, and then hung up, just as the cab was pulling up in front of the hospital. He opened the door and gave some money to the cabbie.  
“Thanks,” he said hurriedly, then half-walked, half-jogged up the steps. Up above, the sky was a churning mass of grey clouds, promising a storm. While in the lift he stared impatiently at the ceiling, resisting the urge to fidget and let out his frustration; instead he clasped his hands behind his back and waited. The lift stopped at Molly’s floor, and John stepped out into the corridor. He hurried to Molly’s lab, opening and closing the door with a bang. She was bent over the examination table,and she looked up with surprise at John’s arrival.  
“John?”  
“Molly,” John stood there, praying to whatever God there may be that she knew where he was. “Please tell me you’ve seen Sherlock today.”  
She shook her head, and John’s heart dropped. “No, sorry. I talked to him on the phone yesterday, but just about how blood acts when its frozen. Why?”  
He closed his eyes and cursed quietly. “He’s missing. Sherlock Holmes is properly missing.”  
Molly stared at him for a moment, wide-eyed, as if trying to figure out if he was joking. A shadow passed over her face and she nodded before snapping off her gloves and throwing them in the trash can. She took off her lab coat and gathered her purse. “Where do we start?” she said evenly.  
John was just getting ready to say he had no bloody idea when his phone began to ring. He fished it out of his pocket. “Mycroft,” he said.  
“John. How long?”  
“Since this morning; that was the last time Mrs Hudson saw him.”  
A beat of silence on Mycroft’s end. “I can’t look for him myself, not at the moment. He wouldn’t want me to anyway. But I can give you some addresses.”  
“Of-of where he used to-”  
“Yes. Sending them now.”  
“Okay.”  
“I have to go. John. Find him.”  
“I will,” he began to say, but the click of the line interrupted. As he was bringing it down from his ear it vibrated with a new message. He opened it; there were 5 addresses. He held it up to Molly. “That’s where.”  
“Let’s go.”  
….  
He’d forgotten how good cocaine had made him feel; he could sense it coursing through his veins, heightening his senses and my god he could think so much faster now. Of course it was the brother, the state of his shirt said it all, why hadn’t he seen it before? He’d sat in the living room of 221B for hours, that simple fact evading his grasp, but one shot of coke later it had only taken a few moments. What did that say about his decision to quit?  
He found another needle and pressed down, releasing another dose into his bloodstream. Leaning back, he propped his head up against the wall and closed his eyes, just savoring the feeling. He ran through some other cases he’d been having trouble with and solved them. (Night watchman, left the back door open, mud on his shoes; Wife, took the cufflinks because they were her father’s; Rival politician, couldn’t let his affair become public.) After he ran out of those, he did a sweep through of the mind palace, did some house cleaning. Occasionally between thoughts he injected more cocaine into his arm, losing track how many he’d taken.  
For a moment, a thought tried to push it’s way to the front of his mind, something about..John? But he couldn’t focus on it now, not while he was thinking so quickly, there was too much to do, so many problems to solve and why did he ever stop this feeling was glorious, he thought, as he took up another needle.  
….  
They had covered 3 of the 5 addresses, and John was frantic with worry, not that he showed it; on the outside he was the epitome of calm. He and Molly were now in front of the fourth building, a decrepit place located in an old industrial section of London that was even worse than the last three, with cracks everywhere and vines growing on the walls; dirt and grime obscured the color of the walls, if they had ever been painted. It had started to sprinkle, not enough for an umbrella but enough to flatten John’s hair to his forehead, not that he cared, all that mattered was getting Sherlock back. Because John would find him. There wasn’t any other acceptable outcome to this other than Sherlock being alright.  
Taking a deep breath, he began walking toward the building, Molly behind him. When he reached the door, he paused and looked back at her. “You don’t have to come in this time,” he said.  
She opened her mouth and he held up a hand. “I know, you want to help. But this one is worse than the others. I’ll call if I need help, okay?”  
Her shoulders slumped just a bit and she nodded. “Okay,” she said softly. “I’ll be right here.”  
“I know,” he said, then squared his shoulders and walked through the door.  
The first thing that hit him, just as the other ones, was the smell. It was a mix of desperation, body odor, and drugs; John had gotten far too accustomed to it over the past few hours. He pulled out the mini torch he always had in his jacket pocket along with his handgun, and began searching through the building room by room, slowly, because the ground was covered in things John didn’t want to think about it. It was fairly abandoned, and dark; sometimes John saw sleeping forms on the ground and he would walk over to them, check to see if it was Sherlock, and keep moving. He climbed up the stairs slowly, and when he reached the second floor, called out. “Sherlock?” Something groaned in response, and John moved a little more quickly. The back of his neck tingled in that way that he’d gotten sometimes in the army, but also when something was wrong, like when Sherlock had gone off with that cabbie, or been up on the roof with Moriarty. He turned the corner and stepped into a room.  
A body, in the corner, slumped over. Sherlock. He pocketed his gun and ran over to him, kneeling down beside him.  
“Sherlock,” he said. “Sherlock!” He put two fingers to his wrist, searching, begging for a pulse. “Sherlock, wake up!” there. Weak, but there. Sherlock’s sleeve was pulled up, and John ran a fingertip over the crook of his elbow and the pinpricks there. “Jesus Sherlock,” he breathed. How much did you take?” He cradled Sherlock’s cheek in his hand as he pulled out his mobile and found Molly’s number.  
“John?”  
“Molly. Call an ambulance, now. I’ve found him but I think he’s ODed,” he said, then hung up, bringing his attention back to Sherlock. He brushed back the curls from his face; Sherlock was thin, thinner than he had been since John had last seen him a couple weeks ago, and he had a layer of stubble that scratched John’s hand.  
“God Sherlock,” John whispered. “What have you done?”  
….  
Sherlock felt like he was floating; or perhaps flying. His thoughts were lightning fast, and yet unbelievably slow, and he felt as if a slow fire was consuming him from the inside out. Somewhere from the depths of his mind palace, he heard a voice, someone he recognized. He tried to open his eyes and call out to it, but he was tied up, in a way, too wrapped up in his thoughts to get out.  
The voice came closer, said his name. Sherlock. He could feel a ghost-like touch on his arm, now his cheek, and he tried to open his eyes again, to see who it was. He could hear the voice, telling him to wake up, but he didn’t want to, he was busy. Then the voice was asking him, Sherlock, what have you done? and then, with a breath, he could smell it, smell him, John, that musk of sweat, gunpowder, and cologne, and he couldn’t let John down. That wasn’t allowed, not anymore. Not after Moriarty. So he pulled and pulled against the chains holding him in the confines of his mind, but he couldn’t break them, and all he managed was a strangled attempt at “John,” before the blackness took over him.  
….  
The ambulance ride was a blur to John; all he could pay attention to was Sherlock. He was dimly aware of Molly telling him only family was allowed, but he ignored her. Sherlock was family, in a way, and he wasn’t going to leave him alone dammit.  
Once they got to the hospital, John was forced out into the waiting room for a few hours, hours he spent pacing the short hall. At one point he called Mycroft to tell him about his brother, but otherwise John waited impatiently until a doctor came up to him and said, “You can see him now.”  
John released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Thank you,” he said, the paused. “How bad is it?”  
“He’ll pull through, but he took upwards of 5 shots, so he’ll be in here for a few days while we monitor him.”  
John nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and walked into the room. It was very white, the ink black of Sherlock’s hair standing out amongst it. John walked over to the bed, pulled up a chair, and sat down on it’s edge. Sherlock turned to look at him.  
“John.”  
“Sherlock.”  
Sherlock looked at John for a moment, then said, “I suppose you have questions.”  
John stood up abruptly “Dammit Sherlock, of course I have questions!” He walked to the window and stood stiffly, focusing on inhaling and exhaling instead of his desire to hug and strangle Sherlock at the same time. “Why? Why did you do it?” he asked lowly.  
“Because I wasn’t seeing it, John. The simplest of observations and it alluded me.”  
John turned back to him. “I can’t believe you touched that poison again. After everything we’ve been through.”  
“John,” Sherlock began.  
“No.” John raised his hand. “Just..stop. I’ve lost you once,” he said, before sitting down again and looking Sherlock dead in the eyes. “And you must be a bloody idiot to think I’d that happen again.” Releasing a shaky breath, John reached for Sherlock’s hand, threading their fingers together, then looked down. “Promise me.”  
Sherlock looked at John quizzically. “Promise what?”  
“That you’ll never do this again, and if you ever feel like you will, to talk to me. Because,” John cleared his throat and shifted a bit. “Because when you do, you aren’t just hurting yourself anymore. You’re hurting me. So please, just promise that you’ll never do this again.”  
Sherlock looked at John, but said nothing. The pause turned awkward, and John nodded slightly. Clearing his throat again he moved to stand up. “Right then. I understand. Married to your work, high functioning sociopath. Really, it’s fine, I don’t-”  
“John.” Sherlock’s fingers tightened around his own, and he paused halfway out of the chair. “Sit.”  
John sat, eyes trained on Sherlock.  
“I…” Sherlock looked down, then up at John, and his eyes, those gorgeous color-changing eyes that were often so calculating, they were full of raw emotions, pain and sorrow, fear, and perhaps even love. “I promise, John.”  
John blinked, and smiled a bit as he tried to blink away tears. Sherlock gave a small chuckle and squeezed his hand.  
They sat there for the rest of the evening, the detective and the soldier, hand in hand, sometimes talking, sometimes not, until Sherlock fell asleep with John drawing small designs on Sherlock’s palm.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this gifset](http://consultingamadman.tumblr.com/post/73259168484/sherlock-au-a-relapse-leads-to-an-overdose)


End file.
